In recent years wine has been a very popular drink, both at home and in restaurants and night clubs. The conventional mode for packaging such wines has been in glass bottles. However, this mode of packaging becomes costly when a restaurant must purchase and dispense a significant quantity of wine. Also, the inconvenience associated with disposing of large numbers of empty wine bottles becomes significant.
Recently some of these problems have been alleviated with the advent of "bag-in-box" wine containers in which wine is packaged in a plastic bag which is supported by a cardboard box. The plastic bag has a dispensing valve as an integral part of the bag and it projects outwardly through an aperture in the box. Although this type of wine packaging has alleviated some of the problems associated with packaging of wine in bottles, the use of such "bag-in-box" packages has not provided any means for refrigerating the wine.
Recently a refrigerated wine dispenser has become available from Vintner's Service Systems in which the "bag-in-box" wine containers may be placed, with the dispensing valve of the bag projecting through a slotted, removable panel in the door of the unit. However, in order to open the door of the unit to remove an empty container and replace it with a fresh container it is necessary to first slide the panel in the door upwardly to disengage the slotted panel from the dispensing valve and the door. After placing a fresh container in the unit and closing the door it is necessary to replace the slotted panel by sliding it downwardly over the dispensing valve projecting through the door. This necessity for removing the slotted panel when unloading the unit and replacing it when a fresh container is loaded into the unit is cumbersome and requires proper alignment of the slotted panel with the dispensing valve.